"Playing" this game consists of watching very lengthy cut scenes, then wiggling the controller a little bit to "do" something. However, you can choose not to wiggle the controller and the game will eventually do whatever action is needed to advance on its own. No, seriously. It will pick dialogue options. It will give you a victory condition after a fight even if you stand there and get pummeled. About the only thing you really have to do is steer your character in certain scenes, and even those scenes are on rails. This is a very linear game. For example, you can either get away from the cops in one scene, or you can get captured and get away in the next scene. Nothing really changes.

Now, I'm ok with strictly linear games that have a fixed plot. Hell, Mega Man is my favorite franchise ever and it's the epitome of that kind of game. But - and this very important - you play Mega Man. Just imagine if Mega Man was a game where you watched the character walk around, look at stuff, and have lengthy conversations, while you got to press one button or shake the controller a little every few minutes.

Does the plot make up for the pitiful "gameplay"?

NO.

You've got a character who has had a ghost-like creature called "Aiden" attached to her through an ethereal umbilical cord for as long as she can remember. Every so often, much less-friendly creatures like Aiden will reach through the void to attack her, and Aiden must defend her. This could have made for a wonderful plot. Just imagine the adventures of a little girl and her pet ghost as they flee from and do battle with monsters. Unfortunately, the plot is mostly about her recruitment into the CIA (???), and her subsequent flight from authority after her power gets too strong, blah blah blah. It's a load of cliches, no better or worse than a lot of b-movies you've seen. It's nowhere near good enough to make up for the lack of meaningful interaction with the game. And the acting -- my god! Willem Defoe plays The Scientist, and he's good as usual. Ellen Page plays The Girl, and she came off as a bit one-note to me. She's all right. And that's as good as it gets. Some of the actors are so over the top, Michael Bay would have been like, "Dude, tone it down." Others are so dull they must have been stoned on oxycodone during the recording.

There is a big caveat to my review of this game. I didn't finish it. I don't know how far I was but it must have been about halfway or a little more. I simply could not stand to watch one more minute of it. I didn't care about the plot, the characters, the playstyle, anything. Maybe shortly after the point at which I quit, the game suddenly becomes the best thing ever made. I doubt it. This thing would have been better as an animated movie. The graphics, particularly the detail of the facial expressions, are really quite excellent. Without the detriment of forced "gameplay", the graphics might have been cool enough to carry a movie.

Heavy Rain has one of the most annoying control schemes in video games though. When you control your character a la Resident Evil, you feel like you're helping your drunk friend back to his or her car after a hard night at the bar, which made the silly challenge of drinking a glass of orange juice (chaser) in the game seem rather fitting. Plus the Street Fighter-style control schemes got old really fast; tilt the controller this way while holding that button down and doing the sho-ryu-ken move on the control pad got silly after the umpteenth time.

But still, any interaction is better than no interaction at all. So I'll probably pass on this game in the topic. Thanks for the heads up!